Moody's

Shelling Out National Coverage for Moody's

Moody's is a leading global credit rating agency and financial analysis firm, crucial for assessing risk and guiding investment decisions in the financial markets.

Challenge 

• Compliance is often not the most appealing subject to journalists at national outlets, with many not seeing how it ties into geopolitics and wider business issues. Our client, Moody’s, was releasing research on shell companies, and what behaviours they exhibit that may suggest they’re involved in financial crime.
• Key findings from the research included over 20,000 shell companies having registered addresses at the Pyramids of Giza, and a registered shell company owner over 900 years old. This data presented a huge opportunity to take a topic area typically confined to vertical media and give it the colour it needed for national attention.

Strategy

• Comprehensive media assessment: Shell companies are used in a variety of overlapping yet distinct financial crimes: sanctions evasion, money laundering, terrorist financing, and tax loophole exploitation. We needed to make sure every media contact for these areas had the data on hand and understood what it meant. 
• Alignment with global teams: Resonance worked in tandem with Moody’s wider corporate communications teams across the US, APAC and different European nations, making sure a global base of journalists was covered, there was no overlap between publications, and the embargo was adhered to. Resonance also led a media angle brainstorm meeting with Moody’s regional teams, preparing ideas and guiding the discussion.
• Newsjacking: Data is a gift that keeps on giving, allowing us to keep leveraging the data for journalists working on relevant stories months after the announcement, as well as integrating it into future byline opportunities. 

“The quality of the relationships they (Resonance) have with different journalists, coupled with the quality of their thinking and output is great. Plus, they are flexible, open to ideas, deliver on time and provide great comms. You feel they are an extension of your own team.”

Lexi Fox-Mills Associate Director, Content Marketing, Moody's

Results

• 12 pieces of coverage secured across UK national and vertical press inc. 2x hits for the research in The Financial Times.

• • The Financial Times - It is too cheap and easy to set up UK companies. We worked with the journalist to share data outside of the main release, with the FT using Moody’s as an exclusive data source.
  • The Financial Times - FTAV’s further reading - Included a backlink to the Moody’s website. 
  • Politics.co.uk - How governments can tackle fraud and crack the shell company code.